Looking for help on a lake thats un fished

[Brad18998]

Iv recently managed to convince a friend of mine who own a private estate witch has got 6.5 acre lake that was built 300 years ago and hasn't been fished in about 150 200 year it's mostly 4 ft deep around d more 60% of the lake with rest varying from 5 to 7 ft deep thick with weed and about 5 ft deep of silt were has never been cleared out iv had a few fish out there bream roach bream hybrid roach over 1.5lb perch and pike up to 20lb mark so far gust wandering how diffrent anglers would go about approaching this and d I'd appreciate the advise

 

[mikench]

Buy a weed rake or several and give the lake a thorough raking. Better still ask your well off mate to get it done professionally. Forget the minutiae of tactics, methods, and bait just have ago. The fish may not have prospered in the 300 years of neglect and civil wars, predation by serfs and cormorants and so on.

I'm curious that you would join a forum and ask for such advice. I doubt anyone will know and there isn't a textbook method of fishing a lake you describe. Good luck.

 

[Keith M]

Sounds like a gem of a place.
If he has no intention of leasing it to a club and you are likely to only fish it yourself then I would clear a part of it (or several small areas) with a large rake head (or two rake heads fixed back to back) attached to a stout rope. This should give you a clear area for you to fish. The actual process of raking your swim(s) will attract fish like Tench into your swim quite quickly sometimes as it will stir all kinds of insects and grubs and bloodworm up.

If the owner is going to look into a making the lake into a going concern by leasing or renting the lake to a club or doing it by himself in the near future then he might need to get the lake into a fishable state by hiring a Mudcat and associated team to hoover all of the built up silt and weed into a nearby field (which is what we did when we leased our estate lake and split the cost between club and landowner).
A club might do this on their own of course if they are guaranteed a lengthy lease.

It sounds like there is already a good resident stock of fish, but if not it might also be a good idea to get the leasing club to go halves with the landowner or pay for it on their own and employ a good fishery advisor to do a survey and give advice as to what to stock into the lake.

But it sounds like you are only going to fish it on your own, so I would just clear a couple of nice areas of weed and just fish these cleared areas, and have fun you lucky s*d ??